UK looking at Newry for potential nuclear waste site

jmayo

cgcsb wrote: »

I tend to agree with you. Nuclear hysteria in Ireland has done dreadful damage to our national energy security. The sit-in of English hippies in the 1974 in Wexford resulted in the construction of moneypoint coal fired power, which is now responsible for the bulk of this country's emissions from electricity generation.

However, the nearest nuclear plant to Newry is about 300km away in Scotland and there's a sea crossing in between. Moving waste such a large distance is nonsense, considering the volume of available sites in Scotland and the North of England. It smacks of British, pulling a fast one. They have form in this regard and the proper storage of nuclear waste is an expensive game, one which the Tory government has no motivation not to cut corners on, outside EU regulation and outside the area where they can get any votes at all.

Eh you forgot the toxic dump that is Sellafield/Windscale/Thorp/Magnox/CalderHall all just situated right across from Newry in Cumbria.

Maybe this is the future business the UK will be in post Brexit.

cgcsb

Zorya wrote: »

We should not have electricity from nuclear power if that's what the inetrconnector deal meant. I didn't sign it.

We do not produce nuclear energy on this island, there is no way another country should even be considering using this island to dump their nuclear waste. In a couple of decades the North will be integrated with the Republic and to have another nations nuclear dump deep in the bowels of the Mourne mountains! No way.

I love the way people use the word ''store'' as a euphenism for ''dump''. When we landfill rubbish we don't call it stores, we call it dumps, because that is what they are. The inability to properly deal with nuclear waste is the reason I am anti nuclear power. This inability continues.

Look at Fukushima - still seeping out large amounts of radioactivity into the Pacific ocean, which no one talks about any more. It is a dangerous technology.

Emotional drivel. You can count global nuclear disasters on one hand. The fossil fuel industry has had thousands of disasters and killed thousands of people. We presently don't have the ability to generate 24 hr electricity without either going nuclear or burning tonnes of peat and coal.

We're presently building an expensive undersea cable so that we can buy in French nuclear (their grid is 80% Nuclear powered) throwing ourselves on the mercy of French domestic policy and strike action. Irish people need to grow up, fast, if we are to maintain a continuous source of electricity.

Hurrache

Jade Colossal Page wrote: »

Educate yourself on nuclear waste and it’s storage before losing the head over it. It’s not a big deal at all, people’s fear of nuclear power and handling the waste is one of the biggest irrational fears of all time.

It’s also held back the roll out of nuclear power and also proper waste handling, in fact in the us for example stupid irrational fear and bad politicians have prevented nuclear reprocessing which would drastically reduce the amount of radioactive waste needing to be stored.

This is exactly what someone suffering from radiation poisoning would say.

topper75

kneemos wrote: »

How would it work if we had a unified Ireland at some stage and the UK had a waste site on our land?

We'd simply dig it up with JCBs and send it back to them in 3 Eddie Stobart trucks.

cgcsb

rgodard80a wrote: »

"Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it".

Educate yourself with this history lesson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

There was a very interesting TV documentary about it last year.
"John Cockroft" was directing the building and at the very last minute managed to convince the architects/government to add air filters/scrubbers to the top of the chimneys. He was ridiculed at the time and they were called "Cockrofts Folly".

When Windscale (since "rebranded" to Sellafield) caught fire, his scrubbers contained the majority of the harmful radioactive air pollutants avoiding a lot of contamination that would've easily blown across the Irish sea to Ireland depending on wind direction.

There have been thousands of fatal accidents in the coal, oil and gas industries. nuclear is like flying in a plane compared to driving in a car, way less likely to go wrong.

piplip87

It's all good lads. We still have the iodine tablets

Auguste Comte

cgcsb wrote: »

Auguste Comte wrote: »

I'm sure the people of Fukushima are delighted they were selected for their nuclear project.

What about the sailors who were incinerated in the oil tanker fire near Whiddy Island? Or the victims of the other THOUSANDS of fossil fuel industry disasters.

While that was terrible it doesn't compare to the long term environmental and human damage caused by nuclear disasters.

AbdulAbhaile

piplip87 wrote: »

It's all good lads. We still have the iodine tablets

I sold mine to Damo down the boardwalk, said he's been buzzzzin ever since...

4068ac1elhodqr

It's highly likely they would face a vehicle replacement/burnout rate faster than they could replace them, anywhere near the Newry area.
There is also great demand for digging machinery across rural areas in the North, likely for 'ATM machine mining' as happened twice in the NW last week.

Even the (few) Unionist politicans can't be paid off in the locality, as the very few ones there are in S.Down are based in Kilkeel and the (granite) Mournes areas.

From the Newry Democrat:

A NOTICE of Motion opposing burying nuclear waste in Newry, Mourne and Down received cross-party support at last night's (Monday) monthly council meeting.

The SDLP's Downpatrick councillor John Trainor, proposed the motion, which was also signed by Sinn Fein's Willie Clarke and DUP and UUP councillors.

The emergency motion outlined that Newry, Mourne and Down District Council (NMDC) rejected the idea of the installation of a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) and was unanimously passed.

zapitastas

Beautiful part of the country to turn into a nuclear dump

cgcsb

Auguste Comte wrote: »

While that was terrible it doesn't compare to the long term environmental and human damage caused by nuclear disasters.

That's just not true, fossil fuels are killing this planet and the death/injury toll from fossil fuels is WAY bigger than nuclear. Look at this list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents

nuclear is much safer than fossil fuels.

Cee-Jay-Cee

We should offer them Leitrim as a dumping ground, its full of mountains, no one lives there and nobody ever goes there so no one would be susceptible to any leaks from the radioactive material being buried there. Its a win-win scenario as we could charge them millions in storage fees.

4068ac1elhodqr

zapitastas wrote: »

Beautiful part of the country to turn into a nuclear dump

Pretty sure they could find somewhere more ugly and remote up in the far North of Scotland, than in the Mournes.

Spelga Dam (volume of 2,700,000 cubic metres and a catchment area of 5.423 km²), also provides tap water towards about 1/2 million folks from Banbridge, Portadown and maybe even parts of Belfast. During building foundations sank 40m below bedrock, as very large boulders can be mistaken for solid bedrock. Image from (cross-border) 'Discover Ireland', area regularly receives 5star ratings across TripAdvisor etc.

kneemos

kneemos wrote: »

How would it work if we had a unified Ireland at some stage and the UK had a waste site on our land?

How would it work if we rushed through a united Ireland so as to avoid England being able to do this.

rossie1977

rossie1977 wrote: »

The us government wanted to store most of the us nuclear waste at yucca mountain in Nevada...a highly seismic region of the country and within 30-40 miles of the fastest growing city in the country, Las Vegas.

The fact Nevada itself has no nuclear power plants and that the plan called for shipments of waste to be transported right through the city of Vegas to Yucca mountain and that the leader of the senate came from Nevada was the reason it was shot down.

I see similar thing happening in Northern Ireland. Tories need the DUP votes and they won't agree to having the six counties used as a dumping site.

I was referring to Jimmy Carter’s completely crazy and populist decision to ban nuclear reprocessing in the US which would drastically reduce the amount of nuclear waste. Only a small percentage of spent nuclear fuel poses a long term threat but it needs to be reprocessed to remove the harmful fission products leaving a very small amount of highly readioactive waste. Instead that decision meant all nuclear waste has to be stored as there is no reprocessing.

Also the yucca mountain site is idea for nuclear waste storage, inside a mountain creating a very very safe area for the storage. The Nevada senate should be overruled, it’s not even an argument that there are no plants in Nevada.

Also there hece been the subtotal of zero deaths and zero accidents from the transport of nuclear waste so it’s not even a valid argument.

1874 wrote: »

Peoples fear of handling Nuclear waste! what :eek:, thats with fairly good reason and you tell others to educate themsel, sweet jesus, not a big deal!

The overall cost of Nuclear power is not positive, billions is hoovered up and gigawatts of electrical power consumed before 1 watt of power is even produced, never mind the by products and costs in storing the waste, or the Co2 produced in the whole process of start to finish to create a nuclear power plant, its a false economy. By the time Nuclear power starts producing electrical power its all payback for the electricity/power consumed, its then a losing battle until decommisioning and the cost of indefinite storage of the by products, risk of harm to the environment (including us).

Anti nuclear drivel. Nuclear energy is the future and until fusion is solved if ever it’s our best hope for sustainable nuclear generation. It’s safe, it’s clean and it’s massiveoy sustainable.

It really shows how clulesss people are on the topic reading these posts.

There is far far more radiation from coal plants than from nuclear plants, massive amounts of highly dangerous waste and in general large environmental damage.

There have been drastically more people killed by hydroelectric energy than nuclear, in fact nuclear is the safest method of nuclear energy.

Auguste Comte wrote: »

I'm sure the people of Fukushima are delighted they were selected for their nuclear project.

Im sure they are far more concerned with the 15000 people killed by the tsunami rather than the zero radiation deaths from the plant.

rgodard80a wrote: »

"Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it".

Educate yourself with this history lesson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

There was a very interesting TV documentary about it last year.
"John Cockroft" was directing the building and at the very last minute managed to convince the architects/government to add air filters/scrubbers to the top of the chimneys. He was ridiculed at the time and they were called "Cockrofts Folly".

When Windscale (since "rebranded" to Sellafield) caught fire, his scrubbers contained the majority of the harmful radioactive air pollutants avoiding a lot of contamination that would've easily blown across the Irish sea to Ireland depending on wind direction.

Do you think I don’t know the details on the windscale fire? I don’t really know what your point is though? Obviously every safety precaution should be and is taken when dealing with nuclear energy or nuclear waste.

Taking about a fire in a badly designed prototype graphite moderated breeder reactor designed to produce Plutonium for the British nuclear explosives program is hardly relevant to modern day nuclear energy.

suicide_circus

jimgoose wrote: »

We'd have to build giant catapults to fuck it back to them. Bonus points for nobbling Boris Johnson on the noggin with a shkelp of Strontium-90. :cool:

would we be giving them back the all the nice stuff they left us or only the waste?

zapitastas

suicide_circus wrote: »

would we be giving them back the all the nice stuff they left us or only the waste?

Well that do owe a substantial amount of rent

4068ac1elhodqr

Jade Colossal Page wrote: »

I
Im sure they are far more concerned with the 15000 people killed by the tsunami rather than the zero radiation deaths from the plant.

Zero radiation related illnesses and deaths? Sure about that....
Suppose birth defects didn't happen around Nagasaki neither...
Suppose there's a property building bononza in chernobyl these days too...

Zorya

Jade Colossal Page wrote: »

.....Anti nuclear drivel. Nuclear energy is the future and until fusion is solved if ever it’s our best hope for sustainable nuclear generation. It’s safe, it’s clean and it’s massiveoy sustainable...etc

It really shows how clulesss people are on the topic reading these posts.

I don't really like responding to posters who use the word drivel as a descriptor of other people's opinions (and you have used it twice so far in this thread), but I will make an exception.

The pro-nuclear energy people often adopt a condescending attitude towards people who do not agree with them, as if their opponents are intellectual morons who cannot possibly understand the facts of the supposed nuclear boon.

And yet, there is a perfectly valid and sound case to be made against the use of nuclear power, which is at least as equally compelling as the pro argument, and perhaps more so on the simple grounds of avoiding potential generational harm.


There are verifiably higher levels of cancer and other terrible diseases in human populations close to nuclear facilities and as a result of the very many leaks from storage facilities. The precautionary principle would caution against nuclear energy on this ground alone.

As another poster argued very well the cost benefit analysis regarding nuclear power is not good. And many of the true costs are hidden from calculation by promoters of the energy. It is an extremely costly form of energy production, pre, during and especially after production. We will be paying heavily for energy that was derived from nuclear sources many, many generations after it was enjoyed. The true costs of decommissioning are almost incalculable.

Plants and waste dumps require a lot of security and pose constant accident risk.

Uranium mining and radioactive waste are huge environmental problems. There is quite a bit of dumping of ''low level'' radioactive waste that has serious health effects.

If nuclear is to be considered the energy of the future there would have to be an increase of nuclear power plants to the tune of 10,000 - 15,000 plants more at least globally, and the raw material required would soon increase in price and become more rare and difficult to acquire - it is thus on this simple ground alone not the energy of the future.

The upscaling of nuclear energy to this kind of levels vastly opens up risk of substandard materials being used espcially in the developing world and substandard monitoring, security etc which increases significantly the risk of accident and vulnerability to terrorism.

The cost of renewable energies are constantly falling. The cost of nuclear energy is constantly rising. Its time has passed. It is not the sci fi energy people once hoped for.

Investment in Nuclear takes away from investment in energies that have a better longer term prospect. It has to be heavily subsidised by the state (ie taxpayers) to be in any way viable. It uses a lot of fresh water.

Nuclear energy processing lays the foundation for the proliferation of nuclear weapons.




So, fine, I understand there are rational arguments to be made in favour of Nuclear Energy. But there are also very rational and valid scientific arguments to be made against it - try not to dismiss those opposed to your views as being spouters of drivel.

Auguste Comte

cgcsb wrote: »

Auguste Comte wrote: »

While that was terrible it doesn't compare to the long term environmental and human damage caused by nuclear disasters.

That's just not true, fossil fuels are killing this planet and the death/injury toll from fossil fuels is WAY bigger than nuclear. Look at this list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents

nuclear is much safer than fossil fuels.

I wouldn't be bigging up fossil fuled energy but nuclear is just too risky. Safe renuable energy is where we should be investing and we most certainly shouldn't be importing the most toxic waste from Britain's nuclear industry.

timthumbni

Have you ever been in Newry?

I’d say the British have been dumping nuclear waste there for years already by the cut of the newry folk.

Roselyn Muscular Pickax

Roselyn Muscular Pickax wrote: »

Zero radiation related illnesses and deaths? Sure about that....
Suppose birth defects didn't happen around Nagasaki neither...
Suppose there's a property building bononza in chernobyl these days too...

They didn't actually, there have been no significant increase in birth defects attributed to the two atomic bombings nor to Cherboybl. The biggest killer of children in Chernoybl was misinformation and assumptions which lead to large numbers of women having abortions.

Extremely large studies of victims of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombing have shown that the vast majority of pregnancies of victims proceeded normally and the children were born perfectly healthy with no lasting issues.

There is of course an increased cancer risk attributed to the bombing and the accident at chernoybl but it is not near as high as many would lead you to believe or claim. Even among the liquidators who received extremely high doses of radiation compared to the general public (of whom 28 died from acute radiation sickness) the cancer risk in the group only increased by approximately 3 - 4%.

Zorya wrote: »

There are verifiably higher levels of cancer and other terrible diseases in human populations close to nuclear facilities and as a result of the very many leaks from storage facilities. The precautionary principle would caution against nuclear energy on this ground alone.

Firstly this topic is extremely difficult to debate on a message board as its just to difficult to go into the required detail so I am really only skirting around the edges to keep it compact and simple. I can recommend many excellent books for anyone who wants to lean about the topic in depth.

As the very small snipet above shows, cancer rates have increased but the instances are not near as high as people think after disasters such as Cherboybl (the only real nuclear disaster involving a power plant) or the nuclear bomb explosions in Japan. There has been no verifiable increase in birth defects however as an awful lot of people wrongly believe.

There has been some other small releases such as windscale, 3 mile Island etc where short half-life fission products were released but simply not eating dairy products for a few weeks from the area was enough to reduce the risk substantially. No increase in cancer rates can be attributed to these nor is it expected to see much if any of an increase in instance due to Fukishima as most of the fission products released went into the ocean which contrary to popular belief is a very good result as they are diluted down to harmless levels.

Aside from these single digit number of incidents most decades ago living beside a nuclear power plant give absolutely no increased risk of cancer or any other disease. Living beside a goal plant on the other hand does as radiation from burning goal is am actual issue.

Zorya wrote: »

As another poster argued very well the cost benefit analysis regarding nuclear power is not good. And many of the true costs are hidden from calculation by promoters of the energy. It is an extremely costly form of energy production, pre, during and especially after production. We will be paying heavily for energy that was derived from nuclear sources many, many generations after it was enjoyed. The true costs of decommissioning are almost incalculable.

Nuclear power plants are expensive to build of that their is no doubt but all power plants are extremely expensive to build and run, the difficulty with a nuclear one is a lot of the expense is upfront whereas other types of plant have very high running costs so the cost is spread over time.

The cost benefit analysis of nuclear is far far better than being claimed by the other poster or other anti-nuclear proponents of course.

Saying things like "we will pay heavily" is just populist speal with nothing to back it up. The amount of waste produced by nuclear energy, even if it is not reprocessed is insignificant compared to what is produced from many other energy sources and the damage they are doing is far worse. Nuclear waste is doing no damage as its properly managed.

Zorya wrote: »

Plants and waste dumps require a lot of security and pose constant accident risk.

Total scaremongering.

Zorya wrote: »

Uranium mining and radioactive waste are huge environmental problems. There is quite a bit of dumping of ''low level'' radioactive waste that has serious health effects.

Uranium mining is no worse than any other type of mining. As for your health effects of low level waste, source??

Zorya wrote: »

If nuclear is to be considered the energy of the future there would have to be an increase of nuclear power plants to the tune of 10,000 - 15,000 plants more at least globally, and the raw material required would soon increase in price and become more rare and difficult to acquire - it is thus on this simple ground alone not the energy of the future.

Uranium is massively abundant on earth and had very little is required to run a nuclear power plant. Even if it were to become scarce (which it will not) then there are plenty of other options some which could even lead to safer reactions than the extremly safe western reactions we have today (not so much in the former soviet union of course who still use terribly designed reactors such as the RBMK design which melted down in chernobly).

Zorya wrote: »

The upscaling of nuclear energy to this kind of levels vastly opens up risk of substandard materials being used espcially in the developing world and substandard monitoring, security etc which increases significantly the risk of accident and vulnerability to terrorism.

The cost of renewable energies are constantly falling. The cost of nuclear energy is constantly rising. Its time has passed. It is not the sci fi energy people once hoped for.

Investment in Nuclear takes away from investment in energies that have a better longer term prospect. It has to be heavily subsidised by the state (ie taxpayers) to be in any way viable. It uses a lot of fresh water.

Renewable sources will never meet demands, except nuclear energy which is essentially a renewable energy source. Converting goal and oil plants to nuclear now would do far gathering things for this planet than the constant nonsense about reducing air pollution from cars etc.

Zorya wrote: »

Nuclear energy processing lays the foundation for the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Another myth which is heavily used by anti-nuclear groups to push their agendas.

zapitastas

Jade Colossal Page wrote: »

They didn't actually, there have been no significant increase in birth defects attributed to the two atomic bombings nor to Cherboybl. The biggest killer of children in Chernoybl was misinformation and assumptions which lead to large numbers of women having abortions.

Extremely large studies of victims of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombing have shown that the vast majority of pregnancies of victims proceeded normally and the children were born perfectly healthy with no lasting issues.

There is of course an increased cancer risk attributed to the bombing and the accident at chernoybl but it is not near as high as many would lead you to believe or claim. Even among the liquidators who received extremely high doses of radiation compared to the general public (of whom 28 died from acute radiation sickness) the cancer risk in the group only increased by approximately 3 - 4%.



Firstly this topic is extremely difficult to debate on a message board as its just to difficult to go into the required detail so I am really only skirting around the edges to keep it compact and simple. I can recommend many excellent books for anyone who wants to lean about the topic in depth.

As the very small snipet above shows, cancer rates have increased but the instances are not near as high as people think after disasters such as Cherboybl (the only real nuclear disaster involving a power plant) or the nuclear bomb explosions in Japan. There has been no verifiable increase in birth defects however as an awful lot of people wrongly believe.

There has been some other small releases such as windscale, 3 mile Island etc where short half-life fission products were released but simply not eating dairy products for a few weeks from the area was enough to reduce the risk substantially. No increase in cancer rates can be attributed to these nor is it expected to see much if any of an increase in instance due to Fukishima as most of the fission products released went into the ocean which contrary to popular belief is a very good result as they are diluted down to harmless levels.

Aside from these single digit number of incidents most decades ago living beside a nuclear power plant give absolutely no increased risk of cancer or any other disease. Living beside a goal plant on the other hand does as radiation from burning goal is an actual issue along with many other issues associated with air quality.




Nuclear power plants are expensive to build of that their is no doubt but all power plants are extremely expensive to build and run, the difficulty with a nuclear one is a lot of the expense is upfront whereas other types of plant have very high running costs so the cost is spread over time.

The cost benefit analysis of nuclear is far far better than being claimed by the other poster or other anti-nuclear proponents of course.

Saying things like "we will pay heavily" is just populist speal with nothing to back it up. The amount of waste produced by nuclear energy, even if it is not reprocessed is insignificant compared to what is produced from many other energy sources and the damage they are doing is far worse. Nuclear waste is doing no damage as its properly managed.



Total scaremongering.



Uranium mining is no worse than any other type of mining. As for your health effects of low level waste, source??



Uranium is massively abundant on earth and had very little is required to run a nuclear power plant. Even if it were to become scarce (which it will not) then there are plenty of other options some which could even lead to safer reactions than the extremly safe western reactions we have today (not so much in the former soviet union of course who still use terribly designed reactors such as the RBMK design which melted down in chernobly).



Renewable sources will never meet demands, except nuclear energy which is essentially a renewable energy source. Converting goal and oil plants to nuclear now would do far greater things for this planet than the constant nonsense about reducing air pollution from cars etc.



Another myth which is heavily used by anti-nuclear groups to push their agendas.

A link to a peer reviewed study on the minimal risk of birth defects attributed to Chernobyl will be required here. What you are posting does not stand to scrutiny. There are most certainly substantially higher risks of congenital birth deformities in the region

Say my name

Where's Adi Roche to counter the pro nuclear posting and give her first hand experience when you want her?

Capt'n Midnight

Jade Colossal Page wrote: »

Educate yourself on nuclear waste and it’s storage before losing the head over it. It’s not a big deal at all, people’s fear of nuclear power and handling the waste is one of the biggest irrational fears of all time.

It’s also held back the roll out of nuclear power and also proper waste handling, in fact in the us for example stupid irrational fear and bad politicians have prevented nuclear reprocessing which would drastically reduce the amount of radioactive waste needing to be stored.

So you are saying if there was a reprocessing plant then there'd be a lot less mess to clean up ?

Like the THORP one in Sellafield ? Which closed down in November.

The cleanup bill for Sellafield is currently running at about £91 Billion and growing - that's about three times Northern Ireland's total GDP.

4068ac1elhodqr

^ Maybe someones (Scarlet Whining Fashion) got their pension fund index linked the lovely Nuc Hazard Waste Industry?

Sellafield 'increases cancer risk' : Children of men exposed to radiation while working at the Sellafield nuclear plant have twice the normal risk of developing certain types of cancer, research suggests. The increased risk relates to leukaemia and lymphoma - cancers of the blood and immune system. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2054694.stm

Britain's nuclear regulator (ONR, est 2014) prosecuted (Health and Safety at Work Act) 'Sellafield Ltd' in February 2018, for allegedly breaching health and safety laws.
They would have been more active had they existed before 2014.

There was clearly an epidemic of thyroid cancer after Chernobyl, you don't have to visit their orphanages to realise this.

Fukushima was x10 less dangerous than Chernobyl and most ended up directly in the Pacific Ocean, foodstuffs were quickly withdrawn, soils bagged up, and iodine tablets were rushed out.

_Brian

Jade Colossal Page wrote: »

Educate yourself on nuclear waste and it’s storage before losing the head over it. It’s not a big deal at all, people’s fear of nuclear power and handling the waste is one of the biggest irrational fears of all time.

It’s also held back the roll out of nuclear power and also proper waste handling, in fact in the us for example stupid irrational fear and bad politicians have prevented nuclear reprocessing which would drastically reduce the amount of radioactive waste needing to be stored.

I’ve watched the Simpsons, it’s not as safe as you portray.

Anyway, if it’s so benign why don’t they keep it on the “mainland”.

alloywheel

timthumbni wrote: »

Have you ever been in Newry?

I’d say the British have been dumping nuclear waste there for years already by the cut of the newry folk.

Shure look what dumping the laundered diesel waste did to the good people of South Armagh;)
Made them crazy, like.

Capt'n Midnight

cgcsb wrote: »

There have been thousands of fatal accidents in the coal, oil and gas industries. nuclear is like flying in a plane compared to driving in a car, way less likely to go wrong.

Two points.

Flying is the safest way to travel long distance but there's no hard shoulder at 30,000ft. When things go badly wrong ...




Nuclear is a one trick pony. It can provide base load.
Also Very expensive and prone to no-warning outages that could last years.

To meet changing demand during the day you need some dispatchable power. Unless you are somewhere like France with 26GW of hydropower and lots of neighbours fto import and export from you are going to need lots of fossil fuel plants.


Nuclear means less investment in renewables or conversion of old fossil fuel pants to more efficient ones. Combined cycle gas is up to twice as thermally efficient as old coal. And gas means something like half the greenhouse gases too. Win-win.

In other words using nuclear to offset coal emissions is a complete waste of time. Better off change from coal to gas. Cheaper, years faster and greener.


Nuclear isn't getting cheaper despite the promises.

Renewables are.

Measured over the life cycle of a nuclear plant solar costs are in free fall.

Capt'n Midnight

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

So you are saying if there was a reprocessing plant then there'd be a lot less mess to clean up ?

Like the THORP one in Sellafield ? Which closed down in November.

The cleanup bill for Sellafield is currently running at about £91 Billion and growing - that's about three times Northern Ireland's total GDP.

A modern reprocessing plan yes of course it would significantly reduce storage requirements for radio active waste. Only a small percentage of spent nuclear fuel is actually at dangerous radiation levels.

Cleaning up sellafield is cleaning up some serious mess from the early crazy days of nuclear development mostly related to military useage so can’t really be used in an argument about modern nuclear energy.

Roselyn Muscular Pickax wrote: »

^ Maybe someones (Scarlet Whining Fashion) got their pension fund index linked the lovely Nuc Hazard Waste Industry?

Sellafield 'increases cancer risk' : Children of men exposed to radiation while working at the Sellafield nuclear plant have twice the normal risk of developing certain types of cancer, research suggests. The increased risk relates to leukaemia and lymphoma - cancers of the blood and immune system. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2054694.stm

Britain's nuclear regulator (ONR, est 2014) prosecuted (Health and Safety at Work Act) 'Sellafield Ltd' in February 2018, for allegedly breaching health and safety laws.
They would have been more active had they existed before 2014.

.

Theirs fundings are not generally accepted and contradict most evidence which shows cancer risk from radiation can it be passed on. A virus is now thought to be the reason behind this increase in cancer rates.

EdgeCase

I wouldn't say that Western reactors are perfectly safe when you look at how badly the old GE Mark I boiling water reactors at Fukushima performed in a crisis. They were far too old.

The RBMK reactor used in Chernobyl were a terrible design that was compromised because it was dual purpose. The rational behind the design was to produce plutonium for weapons.

There's a Soviet reactor called VVER which is regarded as very safe and even used in Finland. That's a much more conventional design that's purely for generating electricity.

granturismo

So its ok to keep shipping our nuclear waste to Germany and the US?

EdgeCase

EdgeCase wrote: »

I wouldn't say that Western reactors are perfectly safe when you look at how badly the old GE Mark I boiling water reactors at Fukushima performed in a crisis. They were far too old.

.

Like pretty much every single incident that has occurred in nuclear power plants it was a person overriding a safety system that caused the meltdown for the first reactor at Fukushima. The hipsi

The idiotic decision to site air cooled generators below sea level which prevent cooling to the other reactors was also a major issue.

EdgeCase

Arguably siting those reactors in a highly seismic zone at all was a questionable decision.

Perifect

Can't they store their nuclear waste in their own ****ing country?

EdgeCase

EdgeCase wrote: »

Arguably siting those reactors in a highly seismic zone at all was a questionable decision.

Well considering all other reactors sites held up just fine would say that they are built to withstand it.

EdgeCase

Jade Colossal Page wrote: »

Well considering all other reactors sites held up just fine would say that they are built to withstand it.

Those particular ones weren't designed for it. I watched NHK documentaries on it and there were serious issues with how the original US designs coped. It wasn't just the generators.

Commercial decisions had kept them online for much longer than was ever intended too.

The later reactors of that type were very substantially refined and redesigned and are far more quake proof.

EdgeCase

EdgeCase wrote: »

Those particular ones weren't designed for it. I watched NHK documentaries on it and there were serious issues with how the original US designs coped. It wasn't just the generators.

Commercial decisions had kept them online for much longer than was ever intended too.

The later reactors of that type were very substantially refined and redesigned and are far more quake proof.

Well agreed that the older reactors were not as capable of withstanding quakes. They should have been upgraded though to more modern and safer reactors.

Capt'n Midnight

EdgeCase wrote: »

There's a Soviet reactor called VVER which is regarded as very safe and even used in Finland. That's a much more conventional design that's purely for generating electricity.

There's another reactor in Finland, Olkiluoto 3.

It's been under construction since 2005 and might go live in 2020.

Cost has soared to 300% of what it was supposed to cost.
It's an example of the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

EdgeCase

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

There's another reactor in Finland, Olkiluoto 3.

It's been under construction since 2005 and might go live in 2020.

Cost has soared to 300% of what it was supposed to cost.
It's an example of the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

That's the French designed EPR which seems to have had huge delays.

It's not unusual in that industry though. I mean there were British plants started in the 1960s that didn't go online until well into the 1980s and were massively over budget.

Small volume, high complexity projects.

It's not a very cost effective tech when you consider the over runs and full life costs, including decommissioning which can be enormously expensive.

At least modern designs seem to be designed to be easily decommissioned. Some of the older ones amazingly didn't think of that!

Capt'n Midnight

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

So you are saying if there was a reprocessing plant then there'd be a lot less mess to clean up ?

Like the THORP one in Sellafield ? Which closed down in November.

The cleanup bill for Sellafield is currently running at about £91 Billion and growing - that's about three times Northern Ireland's total GDP.

is that because it is 75% of the total nuclear provision?

The 2018 forecast is that future clean-up across the UK will cost around £121 billion spread across the next 120 years or so, a slight increase on the previous year’s estimate.

91bn/120 years is £758m per year. are you claiming NI's GDP is only £252m?

you are a master of making 1+1= whatever it is you want it to equal to prove a point

Perifect

Perifect wrote: »

Can't they store their nuclear waste in their own ****ing country?

they are

cgcsb

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Two points.

Flying is the safest way to travel long distance but there's no hard shoulder at 30,000ft. When things go badly wrong ...




Nuclear is a one trick pony. It can provide base load.
Also Very expensive and prone to no-warning outages that could last years.

To meet changing demand during the day you need some dispatchable power. Unless you are somewhere like France with 26GW of hydropower and lots of neighbours fto import and export from you are going to need lots of fossil fuel plants.


Nuclear means less investment in renewables or conversion of old fossil fuel pants to more efficient ones. Combined cycle gas is up to twice as thermally efficient as old coal. And gas means something like half the greenhouse gases too. Win-win.

In other words using nuclear to offset coal emissions is a complete waste of time. Better off change from coal to gas. Cheaper, years faster and greener.


Nuclear isn't getting cheaper despite the promises.

Renewables are.

Measured over the life cycle of a nuclear plant solar costs are in free fall.

Costs of nuclear are large, no doubt. Nothing else delivers the same result is the problem. Cost of solar and wind is dropping but you can't base load with either, there are promises of better storage to allow for a renewable base load but this remains theoretical and uncosted.
Gas is a low-carbon option but we'll run out of gas in 20 years and depend on Russia and the countries in between here and there for supply.

Here's the big kicker, the Celtic Interconnector which will allow us to baseload with French nuclear, exporting the problem in typical Irish style will cost €930m, might as well call it a billion. And at that we'll be depending on French energy policy to give us a good price and not subject us to French industrial action.

cgcsb

Roselyn Muscular Pickax wrote: »

^ Maybe someones (Scarlet Whining Fashion) got their pension fund index linked the lovely Nuc Hazard Waste Industry?

Sellafield 'increases cancer risk' : Children of men exposed to radiation while working at the Sellafield nuclear plant have twice the normal risk of developing certain types of cancer, research suggests. The increased risk relates to leukaemia and lymphoma - cancers of the blood and immune system. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2054694.stm

Britain's nuclear regulator (ONR, est 2014) prosecuted (Health and Safety at Work Act) 'Sellafield Ltd' in February 2018, for allegedly breaching health and safety laws.
They would have been more active had they existed before 2014.

There was clearly an epidemic of thyroid cancer after Chernobyl, you don't have to visit their orphanages to realise this.

Fukushima was x10 less dangerous than Chernobyl and most ended up directly in the Pacific Ocean, foodstuffs were quickly withdrawn, soils bagged up, and iodine tablets were rushed out.

Grand now post a list of the health impacts and mortality rate from continued fossil fuel dependency.

EdgeCase

For €930 million?! You've got to be kidding. A large, very standardised combined cycle gas plant can't even be delivered for those kinds of costs.

You'd be talking about an investment of between €3 and €10 billion to do that and we'd be relying on either UK or French reprocessing anyway, but would probably have any waste returned to us as well as non-reprocessable waste for our own longterm storage, which would have to be built and maintained.

If you think the NCH overrun is bad, you'd want to see what can happen with one of these projects.

France has huge economies of scale to do this stuff relatively cheaply because they went so head-first into nuclear in the 1970s.

Any interconnector also gives us access to non-nuclear renewables too - such as solar from much more sunny climes than here.

Regardless of what we do domestically, an interconnection to France and the continental grid makes an awful lot of sense.

Zorya

I dunno, all the people on here bigging up Nuclear Power might want to have a look at the trends - Nuclear Phase Out is the trend we are presently in.


From Wikipedia -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out

A nuclear power phase-out is the discontinuation of usage of nuclear power for energy production. Often initiated because of concerns about nuclear power, phase-outs usually include shutting down nuclear power plants and looking towards fossil fuels and renewable energy.

Three nuclear accidents have influenced the discontinuation of nuclear power: the 1979 Three Mile Island partial nuclear meltdown in the United States, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the USSR, and the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. As of 2018, Italy is the only country that operated nuclear reactors but has since phased out nuclear power completely.

Following the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Germany has permanently shut down eight of its 17 reactors and pledged to close the rest by the end of 2022.[2] Italy voted overwhelmingly to keep their country non-nuclear.[3] Switzerland and Spain have banned the construction of new reactors.[4] Japan’s prime minister has called for a dramatic reduction in Japan’s reliance on nuclear power.[5] Taiwan’s president did the same. Shinzō Abe, the prime minister of Japan since December 2012, announced a plan to re-start some of the 54 Japanese nuclear power plants (NPPs) and to continue some NPP sites under construction.[6]

As of 2016, countries including Australia, Austria, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, and Portugal have no nuclear power stations and remain opposed to nuclear power.[7][8] Belgium, Germany, Spain and Switzerland are phasing-out nuclear power.[8][9][10][11] Globally, more nuclear power reactors have closed than opened in recent years but overall capacity has increased.[10]

Italy is the only country that has permanently closed all of its functioning nuclear plants. Lithuania and Kazakhstan have shut down their only nuclear plants, but plan to build new ones to replace them, while Armenia shut down its only nuclear plant but subsequently restarted it. Austria never used its first nuclear plant that was completely built. Due to financial, political and technical reasons Cuba, Libya, North Korea and Poland never completed the construction of their first nuclear plants (although North Korea and Poland plan to). Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ghana, Ireland, Kuwait, Oman, Peru, Singapore, Venezuela have planned, but not constructed their first nuclear plants. Between 2005 and 2015 the global production of nuclear power declined by 0.7%.[12]

cgcsb

The German example: they have domestic coal they want to burn, Fukushima is the berfect excuse to switch from nuclear to coal. There are climate change targets they'll miss as a result, but Germany will simply change the rules on those targets so they'll be fine.

Zorya

cgcsb wrote: »

The German example: they have domestic coal they want to burn, Fukushima is the berfect excuse to switch from nuclear to coal. There are climate change targets they'll miss as a result, but Germany will simply change the rules on those targets so they'll be fine.

Yeah, that's why a country decommissions a nuclear reactor at huge cost, and commits to phasing out entirely - because they have coal to burn. Did they not have coal to burn before?

And what about all the other places?

It's just not the fuel of the future.
And the Brits ain't dumping their waste on this island as long as I have breath!

SteM

alloywheel wrote: »

Lots of Irish people choose to emigrate to parts of the world where electricity ids generated by nuclear power, and they do not seem to mind.

What sort of argument is this for allowing nuclear waste to be dumped in Newry? Whether you think it's right or wrong to dump/store waste there this is just an awful argument imo, why does people choosing to move to other places in the world justify something happening here?

Zorya

Zorya wrote: »

I dunno, all the people on here bigging up Nuclear Power might want to have a look at the trends - Nuclear Phase Out is the trend we are presently in.


From Wikipedia -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out

It's sad that misinformation, irrational fears and politicians willing to pander to this are resulting in a reduction in the best way the planet has for generating clean electricity (short if Fusion). As a Physicist who has always been strong advocate for nuclear power and absolutely adore the beauty of fission, its power and efficiency I really do sometimes wish I was alive in the days where it was being developed and gung-ho experiments were the norm. People appreciated how good it was then but unfortunately as I said irrational fear has gotten in the way.

Unfortunately my interest in nuclear engineering and the history of nuclear developments is just a hobby but a few decades ago I would have without a doubt have gone down this route with my studies and career also and would have loved to work on experimental reactors, nuclear rockets etc etc.

SteM wrote: »

What sort of argument is this for allowing nuclear waste to be dumped in Newry? Whether you think it's right or wrong to dump/store waste there this is just an awful argument imo, why does people choosing to move to other places in the world justify something happening here?

Even using the term "dumped" is just a loaded way to put it and immediately get peoples backs up on it. You would swear the spent fuel was just being thrown into an open pit in the ground, nuclear waste storage couldn't be more the opposite of this.